So it’s Passover… and we are spending the night in tonight, cooking and hanging out together. But, since we obviously can’t order takeout or have a traditional “pizza and a movie night,” we’re making our own Passover versions of foods we would eat the rest of the year if we were having a quiet night at home: artichokes with a garlic dipping sauce, egg drop soup, and matzo pizza! We’ve been slowly working our way through the David Simon show, “Homicide,” which takes place in Baltimore and we’re about to start the second-to-last season.

So let’s see…

Artichokes: this is quite possibly the most simple recipe on the face of the planet… you put two artichokes in the steamer basket over a pot of water and you let them steam for 40-50 minutes, depending on the size of the artichokes. You can tell they are done when you can pierce the bottom with a fork without too much resistance.

Garlic Dipping Sauce: again, a very simple recipe… depending on how much garlic you want in your dipping sauce… mix up mayonnaise with garlic powder until it tastes just garlicky enough for your tastes!Then you can dip the artichoke leaves in the garlic dipping sauce for a tasty tasty appetizer!Egg Drop Soup: Follow the directions on the package… not very difficult! This particular brand had two different directions to follow, depending on whether or not you want to include egg noodles in with your soup. We did use egg noodles, and the soup turned out very tasty. It was much more thick than it would be if we had made it from scratch, but still very tasty.